To all of you who warned me about getting hooked on FM 2005
 

You were right. I'm hooked, already. Now if I really knew what the heck I was doing I wouldn't just be hooked, I'd be obsessed. :)

i'm hooked too. I took the MLS MetroStars to the MLS Finals in my first year. i like managing an MLS team - we can afford decent enough transfer fees for players but aren't up to the Manny U level yet. i'm liking the game more now because the MetroStars represent NYC (among other cities), rather than some random Brit team that i have no connection with. i like Arsenal, but i want to build up my reputation before taking that team on, i don't think it's realistic for a 27 year old American to manage a team like Arsenal. i'm having fun.

FM is the one game that I keep getting drawn back to.. I'm deep into Jade Empire and am completely enjoying that game. I want to play Jade Empire so much to see where the story goes next, but I find myself drawn back to FM despite other good games out there. I don't think I've gone more than 2 days without playing at least a little FM since the 5.05 patch came out.

I've been playing CM/FM since 96/97 and for the first time in my experience of the game I had the bizarre circumstance of having my Sheffield Wednesday squad relegated from the Premiership, but still managing to win the FA Cup. The big boys knocked themselves out of the Cup and we faced a surprisingly good Bolton side (they finished 3rd in the Prem.) in the final. As the game unfolds, my best middie gets sent off by the card-throwing ref, Rob Styles, fifteen minutes in before I realize that Styles is officiating the game (tackling has to be set on easy with this guy). But somehow we manage to scratch out a goal in the 60th minute and hold on with 10 men to win 1-0. Unbelievable!!! So we're back in the Championship next season, but playing European football at the same time. I've managed to win some cups with lower level teams, but always when my team was winning in the league as well. I've never had a schizophrenic squad like this Sheff Wed. one where they decide to play superbly in Cup games, but just can't scrape out any wins in league play. Great stuff though!

I'm pretty damn addicted too.

Muhahahahaha .... (and other evil laughs) ...

Another innocent drawn within my grasp ;)

Now we know why he's referred to as Darth Vaughan on the SI boards :D

This actually happened to Ipswich irl a couple of seasons ago - they got relegated into the Championship but clinched a EUFA Cup spot through the fair-play rule if I remember right ...

Don't you guys at SI have any remorse? You know how many marriages you've broken up?

Hate to say I told you so but, I told you so :D

Been playing the game since getting it on November 15 and just like EaglesFan27, I don't think I've spent two days in a row without playing it some. I'm a slow player and with family and all, playing time is sometimes hard to come by, but I always find a 30-45 minutes to sqeeze in at least one game with my squad, or a couple weeks of offseason work. It's just an amazing game...

FM
PS: my current career says I've been playing for over 13 days, with maybe some time where I wasn't in front of the PC, so let's say 13 full days. That'S 312 hours over 5 months, or 62 hours a month, or 14.4 hours a week. :eek: To anybody, that's the amount of time they could put in two days of playing (maybe even one day) but to me, it's simply amazing that I find time to play this much with two kids and a house and all the activities I go with my oldest son (soccer, karate, etc). A testament to the quality of the game, I'd say...

Quick noobish question. If I had a scrub that has 0 value, when teams offer to have him for 0, what are the pros/cons of doing so? Does agreeing mean that they assume his salary and I am free of him totally?

yup. They take him off your hands

I've avoided FM for the very reason that I know I wouldn't put it down. I was playing EHM instead but got busy and haven't looked at it in a while. Now with EHM2 coming out this summer, I may not get much of a chance before a new version of FM is out.

FM2005 is a job well done imho

I won't go as far as to say its perfect or anything but i still "want" to play it

I have the last 6 versions of cm/fm and can't say i felt abused with any (cm4 was the most disapointing maybe but still a good game onto itself everything considered)

If sigames gets baseball and hockey where fm is right now i don't how i will ever get to play other games that i want to. I don't have enough time for everything now!

So I'm here at work but hoping you guys can answer a question before I get back to the manual.

Can you make board requests in this version? My Stafford Rangers are pocketing the fruits of my labor and not increasing the wage budget or transfer allowance.

how is patch 5.05 now?

is MLS league all fix?

yes, you can make board requests (and then if they don't go with it, ultimatums that say basically.. "Do this or I WILL Quit".. the board may relent, or they might take you up at your word)

I think the 5.05 patch is great. The game is not perfect, but it is good enough that I continually want to keep playing.

I've started an MLS career on my new computer, and it seems good to me. I'm not an expert on the MLS so I don't know if everything is perfect there, but it seems good to me.

Note made about easy tackling...

Styles through 11 yellows in a recent game of mine...7 on my squad.

I've made a couple requests to my board, and they've denied both. I haven't issued an ultimatum or anything, because I'm still above my wage budget, so I can understand where they're coming from. If you issue an ultimatum and they still refuse, do you have to quit? And if not, what happens if you don't quit?

I'm in the same situation as Rudy Huckleberry -- I just got promoted to Conference National (Stafford got promoted, too, actually), and I want to keep running up the leagues.

Rob Styles is a tool... Now, I said it, I feel much, much better...

FM

Try changing the individual and team Closing Down settings in addition to Tackling. Although I don't think it helps with him. I just cross my fingers and hope that it'll be the other team on the receiving end.

Styles is assigned to the real FA Cup final this season.

Lock him and Mark Cooper (see? I can say his name without going insane) in a barrell and let them go riding over Niagra Falls.. :D

On second thought, send them seperately, just so I can see Cooper book Styles for diving. (Bad Pun Alert!)

Here's another question:

When I send a scout out to look for players, does it matter where he goes? I sent mine to the US one fall for 3 months, to look for cheap talent, and he came back with nothing. Is it because the US has so much less talent than England, where he found tons of cheap guys all summer? Or is it because England is the only country I have included, meaning I'll be unsuccessful in any other country?

Good, I see your anger management therapy is going well. When's your next meeting due, so all the fans of the losing team in the real lif FA cup can attend? :D

FM
PS: more bad pun alert! just as long as he dives with... style...

you can send your scout out to look all over other countries?

obviously, i should spend more time looking around the game. ;)

Hmm.. note to self.. make more Mark Cooper and Rob Styles tackling dummies. The last one is starting to wear out, fourty thousand Arsehole fans could damage it severely (Not too worried if Arse wins over ManYoo, all their fans will suddenly start claiming they were Arsenal fans all along :D)

No FM referee could ever be as bad as Uriah Rennie, circa CM 00/01. Still gives me the shivers thinking about it.

It's because the US has less talent, not because you didn't include them.

ice: I would go into my ranty-ravey mode about Mr Cooper, but I see FrogMan still has that taser and I don't want to pay for electricity again.. but look at my Bristol threads over in the Dynasty forum for why I hate him so badly. Frog and Eagles I think also had run ins with this mental defective.

I think I've had Cooper ref me a couple of times early on when I was with Luton in League One, but I'm definitely suffering through the living hell that is know as Rob Styles, especially since I've arrived to the Premiership.

Kinda funny though. Some of you may know, I used to be a soccer referee, from about when I was 15 to when I turned 22 or so. In the last few years, I was the referee dispatch for the whole Quebec area, dispatching refs to about 8-10 cities in the immediate Quebec City area. While I wasn't really evaluating them (I was only dispatch, not head referee) I got to know who was good and who wasn't and what the top level of everybody was. There were a few that were amazing soccer players, but were just sooooo bad as refs, it wasn't even funny. One or two of them, I knew their top level was maybe regional U16 male, maybe U18 female, but absolutely not senior male or even U18 male. Eventually, there came a time when I had a cancellation and I was out of recourse and had to put the not so good one in the center for a U18 male game, with the kind of results that Rob Styles can have. I'd have a look at the game sheet and there it was, 4-5 yellows on both sides, a red, sometimes two, and often times a call from the league disciplinary committee asking me why I had put that "clown" in there... Good times :D

FM

It's a combo of both really. The US will have less talent because you didn't include all players from the US in your game, and the US will have less talent overall. There's only a few US players that can get work permits anyway.

Okay, so how do you make a board request? What screens do you go to?

I don't want to waste time in the manual when I get home. I've got to get straight to the strategy. :D

Go to confidence report, you know where they tell you how much they like/hate you. The link to make a request is at the bottom right (or left if your skin is left handed)...

FM

I wish SI would attempt an American pro football sim. :)

I wholeheartedly agree with BJ's hip on this one. It is hard to imagine how much I'd be drawn to the game if I was as familiar with Soccer as I am with Football or Baseball.

The CM/FM is easilly the gold standard for text based sports sims. I really enjoy FOF, FBCB, and Puresim, but SI is playing on a whole different level with the CM/FM series. They are literally generations ahead of the other games, in my opinion.

It's coming some day, I'm sure.

I got shafted by Styles two matches ago. 1 red and 4 yellows. Then I appealed the 1 match ban and it was extended by 2 more games. Punk. :)

see how real this game feels... ;)

FM

Sammy Sosa says:

EEeees SO REEEL!

Yeah! I just discovered it myself pretty recently. Click on your team name, then click on "players" on the left margin, then click "scouting" -- on the bottom right, click on "scout" and select a scout. Then click on "assign.." and a scout assignment window will come up. You have to tell the scout where to look for players (a particular team, region, tournament, maybe even league or continent), how long to look for, then what kind of players you're looking for (with my low transfer funds and wage budget, I usually just look for players valued at less than $10K, making less than $10K per year). When I have him search in England, he gives me tons of players, but the one time I sent him to the US for 3 months, he came back empty-handed.

I have no idea if this is true, but I always worry that if I send my only scout on a trip like this, I won't be able to "get scout report" on a player, or at least it will take a very long time, and I hate that. So when I know I'm going to want to request reports on specific players, I don't send my scout on trips.

Game rocks! I entering the final leg of my first season with Cambridge City. Injuries kiled us at about the 2/3 season mark, and we kinda fell off the horse. We are third, a point out of second, and about 8-9 points out of first (and unlikely to catch them). We are getting back to full health, but we cannot get a streak going. We play the Grays, second place, next.

How does the MLS Combine work?

Good luck, Galaxy! Hopefully you're able to take first place, since the playoffs out of Conference South can be a pain.

Hearing that sort of comment makes me think we're heading in the right direction :D

Whenever people talk about folk in the game as if they're real its nice, it means they're 'into' the game in the way I want them to be, I love seeing comments indicating that players are 'loyal' or 'arsey' :D

I didn't see anyone answer this question, so I will. If you issue an ultimatum, the board might make you quit, but if you are very well respected they will "excuse your outburst" and let you continue to work for them, but they will generally be less pleased with you. However, I never use the ultimatum option unless I'm really prepared to walk from the team.

How does the relegation/deregation work exactly between the Conference leagues? I know the top teams each get automatic promotions, but who is regulated/promoted of the remaining teams?

Imagine the 2-d match engine for Am. FB. Amazing.

Winner of North and South both auto-promoted.

Teams 2nd-5th in each region playoff.

Winner of North Playoff vs South Playoff=3rd promotion team

very happy to be representing the "ordinary people" for you :D

It's really how I feel with this game, simply amazing. I've not played many sports management games where I feel a bit of pain with every little loss, where I get royally pissed off about losing a 2 goal lead in the second half of a game, etc. Is it perfect, no, but it does a very good job of mimicking real life and it's role playing aspect is simply amazing to me.

Heck, I got all excited when my reputation as a manager went from "national" to "continental" because of some good comments from Liverpool's Rafa Benítez :D

FM

Suprised we haven't seen the, "To all of you who warned me about getting hookers in 2005" parody thread yet.

Welcome aboard Bo, don't say we didn't warn you. Great Game!